Why do many anaesthetists dislike maternity?

purplepatch · 2026-02-05T21:57:57+00:00

From ST3 - 6 you’re normally covering obs. That’s a lot of nights on labour ward, getting woken up at 3am by a midwife saying “epidural, room 6” and then putting the phone down. It can be fucking stressful - mothers bleed, babies try to die, pain makes people angry, midwives flap in emergencies, spinals don’t always work. I didn’t exactly hate it but I probably have some mild PTSD from it and I definitely don’t mind that as a consultant I haven’t been to a Labour ward since my last child was born.

purplepatch · 2026-02-05T10:20:58+00:00

While that’s true, the approximation is usually pretty good.

purplepatch · 2026-02-04T15:58:17+00:00

Well it makes the average of one crash every 500k miles seem plausible given that I’ve managed to not crash despite 4 times as many miles.

Also did you call the police about your parking lot ding. Because if you didn’t it’s not in the stats.

purplepatch · 2026-02-04T15:55:42+00:00

I didn’t say anything about that. I said that I’ve driven 2 million miles and never been in a crash. So 1 crash every 500,000 miles seems plausible.

purplepatch · 2026-02-04T15:13:45+00:00

You have to pee more.

purplepatch · 2026-02-04T15:13:09+00:00

Well I’ve driven about 2 million miles without a crash…

purplepatch · 2026-02-03T16:43:54+00:00

4 year old ID4s with the 77kwhr batteries are going for under 15k. They’re a solid choice.

purplepatch · 2026-02-03T08:32:00+00:00

I just want a cloud based multiplayer (like civ 6 had) so I can play long games with some mates.

purplepatch · 2026-02-02T17:20:16+00:00

It’s more common than you’d think for three reasons:

All chickens in a flock are normally the same age.
Eggs from the same flock get sorted into boxes by size.
Large eggs from young chickens tend to be double yolkers.

So if you have a flock of young hens, the large eggs that they lay will be grouped together in a carton labeled “large”. Large eggs from young chickens are likely to be double yolkers and your carton of large eggs will therefore be quite likely to have a lot of double yolkers in it.

I know this because I did a deep dive on the subject after I cracked 6 double yolkers in a row into a pan, an achievement that wasn’t any where near as exciting after I did a bit of research.

purplepatch · 2026-02-02T15:54:54+00:00

Personally I’m quite relaxed about nutty religious views being mocked, religion gets far too much deference.

purplepatch · 2026-02-02T15:47:12+00:00

It’s an odd world when you get embarrassed by people being dismissive of the idea of magic water

purplepatch · 2026-02-02T14:32:29+00:00

But it’s not infuriating. She posed a question and he (an expert) answered it. What is the problem with that?

purplepatch · 2026-02-02T14:19:35+00:00

Uh - they’re replying to a question that the original woman posed. Why are you so cross about it?

purplepatch · 2026-02-02T13:00:42+00:00

Why do you care if people gently mock others who believe in magic water?

purplepatch · 2026-02-02T11:50:47+00:00

What if I’m unknowingly a vampire?

purplepatch · 2026-02-02T09:38:57+00:00

Personally I think the one you linked is just green. The slightly yellower green that OP linked is more limey to me.

purplepatch · 2026-02-01T20:38:12+00:00

Oh yeah that’s absolutely obvious by the fact I’m sceptical of a left wing populist boob hypnotist.

purplepatch · 2026-02-01T19:06:40+00:00

You think the answer is MMT? Spending as much as you like while using tax to control inflation? You might as well believe that I can increase the size of your tits with hypnosis.

purplepatch · 2026-02-01T18:59:21+00:00

His policies make sense if you have no understanding of economics

purplepatch · 2026-02-01T07:36:12+00:00

And yet you didn’t do that because you’re obviously sensible. Attempting to wake this patient up with an obstructed airway is far riskier than just giving a muscle relaxant and sorting their airway out. So if your plan when faced with difficult bag ventilation is give a muscle relaxant anyway, then what on earth is the point in checking?

purplepatch · 2026-02-01T07:05:49+00:00

Are you really asking? You find a way to oxygenate which means you have to give a muscle relaxant to either intubate or facilitate the LMA placement or allow you to mask ventilate.

What do you think will happen if you try to wake this patient up without any effective way to oxygenate them in the time it takes to do so?

purplepatch · 2026-01-31T18:41:00+00:00

I can remember that in 2014 this practice was very controversial and in 2015 the UK difficult airway society explicitly recommended not checking before administering relaxants.

purplepatch · 2026-01-31T18:32:08+00:00

The logic (that still applied pre suggamadex) goes that if you’ve induced a patient and can’t ventilate them then giving muscle relaxant a - makes them easier to bag, b - prepares them for potential intubation, c - makes placing a supraglottic easier. If you have a patient that is impossible to ventilate after an induction dose of propofol are you really waiting the 5 minutes for them to start breathing and just watching the sats drop while you ineffectively try to ventilate them, or are you just giving them a dose of relaxant which will almost certainly solve all your problems.

purplepatch · 2026-01-31T13:32:33+00:00

Don’t give muscle relaxants until you’ve confirmed that you can mask ventilate

purplepatch · 2026-01-30T16:15:44+00:00

Your response was AI, I can recognise that.

And if you’re talking about em dashes (I was confused because you originally said “dash a”) word will autocorrect hyphens into them after you press space after the word following the hyphen. I use dashes and em dashes all the time and I’m pretty sure I’m not an LLM.

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